3 AUM Members Arrested Over Apartment Renting

YOKOHAMA, Nov. 30 – Three members of the AUM Shinrikyocult were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of renting an apartment in Yokohama as a place of residence by hiding their intention to use it as an AUM facility, police said.

According to the police, Takashi Kawaguchi, 41, the head of an AUM training center in Sendai, and the two others rented the apartment for two years from December 2001.

Kawaguchi was also the head of the group’s Yokohama training center at that time, the police said.

The police raided AUM facilities in Sendai, Tokyo and Yokohama in connection with the case.

AUM, which renamed itself Aleph in 2000, was founded by Shoko Asahara, who has been sentenced to death for the 1995 sarin gas attack by AUM on the Tokyo subway system, and other crimes committed by the group.